Landowner troubled by river ordinance

My land is your land? Kevin Blakeman of Windsor County is waging a one-man fight against recent river corridor regulations.

MIDDLEBURY | The ancient, 60-mile-long White River flows through an eastern section Addison County at Granville. The river, popular for fishing and boating, also passes through most of adjoining Windsor County.

The narrow White River Valley received the brunt of Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, and while residents have gotten on with their lives, the memory of the impact of the weather event lingers. For example, the town of Granville was cut off from the rest of Addison County by Irene-related flooding.

South of Granville, landowner Kevin Blakeman is worried about the river and its many tributaries for an entirely different reason.

Since his hometown of Sharon embraced the state’s restrictive Flood Hazard Area bylaw and River Corridor Regulations, his developable land options appear to have shrunk to nothing.

With retirement on the horizon, the realtor and former selectman would like to be able to develop a 15-acre portion of his property. The town says he can’t because Fay Brook may flood some day, causing erosion around his property and properties downstream and on to the White River.

Blakeman believes that the River Corridor Regulations are too draconian and ultimately un-American. He also believes the flood hazard maps have been arbitrarily drawn.

“I am a big proponent of property rights: when you own something you have some rights, right? But... the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR)... River Corridor Regulations... sounded wonderful, yet it didn’t go as well as you think it might. It’s just not practical.”

So far, many Vermont towns have rejected the severe regulations, and their selectboards have decided not to enact them for reasons Blakeman believes are more logical than his town’s decision to adopt them.

“The ordinance states that you can’t build a subdivision or plan new development where you have to cross a ‘fluvial hazard,’ which means if you have to cross a brook to get to the property you can’t get a permit,” he said. “Since nearly every road in town is named after a brook, there’s an awful lot of property that’s on the backside (of streams).

The state would like to see more communities in Winsdor, Rutland and Addison counties adopt the river corridor regulations.

Officially, the ANR states that “if river corridors are not protected at the community level, the state will bear an ever-increasing burden… in terms of flood disasters and the human misery they cause when there are less and less places on the landscape where streams can expend the flows and erosive energy of a flood.”

Blakeman said that if he applies for a permit to build along the brook it will likely be declined.

“I have tried meeting with Gov. Phil Scott’s office staff. My state representative arranged a personal meeting with Director of Policy Development and Legislative Affairs Kendal Smith, but that lasted about five minutes. She said that she would have Julie Moore, the new secretary of Agency of Natural Resources (ANR), call me. But that was the end of that,” he said.

State Rep. David Ainsworth, a Republican whose family has been farming along the White River since 1867, is serving his first term on the House Committee on Natural Resources, Fish and Wildlife. He has serious concerns regarding the ordinance.

“I am going to pursue this a little bit more. I am not convinced about it,” Ainsworth said. “Land below me, along Vermont Route 14 on the White River, which is 14 feet above the highway is designated as a no development zone; nothing can be put on it. Yet houses along Route 14 are exempt. It seems arbitrary to me. I feel this isn’t the way laws should be. It’s being ruled in the eyes of the beholder.”

Meanwhile, Blakeman hopes to continue to educate all Vermont land owners on where the White River and its tributaries flow, about what he sees as local and state government’s trend toward “Big Brotherism.”

“This regulation was passed on the sly (in Sharon) and most property owners... don’t even know it happened,” he said. “It’s time someone shine a light on what amounts to a government ‘taking’ of private property.”